


Psychological Treachery

by petit_moineau



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 20:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6535165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petit_moineau/pseuds/petit_moineau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn’t the most perceptive with the inner workings of the metaphorical human heart, but he felt instinctively that something was about to change.  Based on the prompt 'how I said I love you': over a beer bottle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Psychological Treachery

**Author's Note:**

> For eleanor-3's [Stragan prompt-a-thon.](http://eleanor-3.tumblr.com/post/141128854422/stragan-prompts-the-way-you-said-i-love-you) Whoops.

Alex’s rented house was old, creaky, and the size of a pin, but it was cozy and well lived-in, a little boat battened down against the spring storm beating at the windows.  He wouldn’t admit it, but it was his second-favorite place in Seattle.  (The quad at the university, right before dawn, when the world was quiet and the trees were in full bloom—that one won by a very narrow margin.)  She nursed a beer that tasted like bourbon, he a hot toddy of hot apple cider and dark rum.  They were on opposite ends of her almost uncomfortably soft sofa, their feet and lower legs sharing a chunky blanket her mother had made.  And she was asking him questions.  He didn’t think she was drunk, but she must have been to be asking.  He didn’t think _he_ was drunk, but he must have been to answer.

“You said…” she paused, like she was trying to decide if she really wanted to ask.  “You said that if Coralee was alive, it wouldn’t change anything.”

“No, I didn’t,” he replied with a flare of what would have been irritation had he not been drowsy and comfortable.  “I asked for whom it changed things.  There’s a difference.”

“Okay, but wouldn’t it change anything for you?”

“No,” he said immediately.

“Oh.”  Her eyebrows raised in surprise.  “But I thought you…”

He sighed.  Just because he’d thought about this very thing didn’t mean he liked to talk about it.  “If it were even fifteen years ago, then it might have.  But it wouldn’t matter now, because whatever her reasons for leaving, she let me think…”

“Yeah.”  Her hand twitched convulsively around her bottle, but they passed into silence.  He thought it was companionable, but he should’ve known she was lying in wait.

“If Coralee being dead or alive doesn’t change anything for you, then why are you looking?”

“Who says I am?”

“Richard,” she said flatly.  “Come on.  If not her, what else?”

She was right, he conceded.  “What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t want to know what had happened?”

He was hedging, and she knew it.  “What kind of wife would she be if she left you on the side of the road without a trace?”

He smiled into his drink, knowing his smile looked a little strange.  He had gotten the distinct impression on several occasions that Alex wasn’t fond of Coralee, but she’d never explicitly said it, and of course, had no reason to, having never met Coralee.  Maybe Richard was funny, but he preferred to have concrete reasons to dislike someone, and tried to reserve judgment until actually meeting them.  “It’s for Charlie,” he admitted grudgingly.  “If I can find what happened to Coralee, I might get Charlie back.”

“Oh,” Alex said, chagrined.  “Has she…has she really not talked to you for all this time?”

He couldn’t meet her gaze.  “She emails me when she changes address.  Someone, and I can only assume it’s her, sends me something practical for my birthday—a mug, a fountain pen, something like that.  It comes to my home address and there’s never a card.”

“How could she just…” He could tell from the corner of his vision that she was shaking her head, unable to finish her question.  He didn’t know the answer to that one.  It fit firmly into the mental box of things he never thought about.

“What do you think you’re going to find?  I mean, what exactly are you searching for?”

“I can’t tell you.”  He didn’t necessarily mean to shut her down, but it was reflexive, automatic.

“Oh, please,” she snapped.  “’Can’t’ is for people who are legally compelled, being held by the mob, et cetera.  I think you mean ‘won’t.’”

“As you like.”

“Richard!  Do you have any idea how unfair that is?”

He frowned.  “What makes you think you’re entitled to know?”

She stared at him, incredulous, for a full five seconds.  “I can start with the part where you froze me out for _three months_ and nearly scared me to death when I found out what had happened to you in that time.”

“I was busy, nothing happened,” he said defensively.

“Three.  Months.”

“Again, busy,” he said.  He knew it was at least a little unfair to her, but at the time, nothing else had seemed more important than what he’d been pursuing.  He’d been angry at her, some would say irrationally so, but hadn’t he stressed to her from the very beginning how important trust was to him? 

He heard her mutter something under her breath that sounded a whole lot like “can see where Charlie gets it from.”

“That’s not fair, Alex,” he snapped, getting angry now.  “You’re not qualified to speak on the relationship I have with my daughter, or her character.”

“No, I’ll tell you what’s not fair.”  The color was rising in her cheeks.  He could respect her for not making a note of how _he_ was hardly qualified to speak on his relationship with his daughter—it was there for easy pickings right in front of her.  “What’s not fair to me is how you invaded _my_ office, used _my_ interns to do your private detective bullshit, and never once told me what was going on.  You acted like you were just entitled to all of it, and I really hope I don’t have to tell you how completely shitty that was.”

It felt like a slap.  He would have preferred it if she’d slapped him.  “I…didn’t think about it,” he admitted.  He felt a hot prickling of something in his chest.  It might have been shame.  Could have been indigestion.

It didn’t pacify her in the slightest.  “I’m not surprised.”

He sucked in a harsh breath through his nostrils, newly angry.  He knew he said things he would regret later when angry.  “It takes two, Alex,” he reminded her, trying to calm himself.  “You could have said no.”

She stared at him.  “Yes, I suppose I could have,” she said, her voice completely empty of affect, “but tell me how much good you think it would have done?  You were so fixated you weren’t even taking care of yourself, and as for me—well, I’m sure you didn’t know, did you?”

She was doing exactly the sort of backhanded thing that he hated.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  Why couldn’t people ever just say what they meant?

It had the exact opposite effect that he’d intended.  She recoiled, offended.  “I can’t believe that.”

“Alex, for Christ’s sake, _what._ ”

“I was about two bad nights away from total collapse, okay?  I hadn’t slept in I don’t even remember how long, and as I hope you’re aware, it takes a substantial amount of willpower to argue with you when you’re _not_ being crazy—“ He bristled at that.  “—and even if I hadn’t been…”  She pulled her feet off the coffee table in front of them, whether because she was overheated with anger or because she was about to spring to her feet, he wasn’t sure. 

He felt suddenly very, very uneasy.  “Alex?”

She resolutely looked at the bottle in her hands.  “Please don’t make me say it.”

He wasn’t the most perceptive with the inner workings of the metaphorical human heart, but he felt instinctively that something was about to change.

She gave the sigh of the infinitely world-weary.  “I would’ve done it anyway.  All of it.”

“But why?”

“Jesus Christ, Richard.  Because I love you.”

The impact was akin to being punched in the stomach, knocking the breath and sense from him.  Should it have been?  Should it really have come to such a surprise?  “Alex.”  It came out as a whisper, and even he couldn’t say what it meant. 

The air between them was charged, nearly snapping with its own electricity, and she felt a million miles away.  Her eyes seemed unusually shiny.  He wanted to say something.  He knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t.  Both of these things were true.  Self-preservation won.  “I…it’s…I don’t know what to say.”  It was the worst lie he could’ve uttered.

She bit her lip and took a shaky breath.  Just like that, she composed herself.  “It’s getting late.”

He blinked and wondered when this conversation would stop giving him whiplash.  “I suppose it is.”

Before he knew what had happened he found himself outside, resolutely trying not to slump against her door in the rain and reflecting on his own inability to navigate emotive psychology.


End file.
